The Supreme Court turned away a group of white and Asian parents’ challenge to a temporary admissions policy at Boston’s prestigious “exam schools” over dissents from two of the court’s conservatives.
The parents argued the policy runs afoul of the court’s decision striking down affirmative action in higher education last year, but Monday’s order keeps the justices out of the dispute that would’ve created another major case implicating race and school admissions.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, said they would have taken up the case, calling Boston’s admissions policy a “glaring constitutional error that threatens to perpetuate race-based affirmative action.”
“I would reject root and branch this dangerously distorted view of disparate impact. The Court, however, fails to do so today, so I must respectfully dissent,” Alito wrote.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, President-elect Trump’s first appointee to the court, in a separate statement said he shared his colleagues’ concerns, but the court was right to stay out of the case because the challenged admissions policy has since been replaced.
“The parents and students do not challenge Boston’s new policy, nor do they suggest that the city is simply biding its time, intent on reviving the old policy. Strictly speaking, those developments may not moot this case. But, to my mind, they greatly diminish the need for our review,” Gorsuch wrote.
The Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence sued over a one-year policy implemented during the pandemic that overhauled how students were admitted to the city’s three exam schools: Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O’Bryant School.
After previously basing students’ admittance on their grades and standardized test scores, the new policy guaranteed seats for students with the highest GPAs from their zip code.
White students made up 31 percent of accepted students after previously comprising 39 percent, and 18 percent of accepted applicants were Asian, down from 21 percent.
Lower courts rejected the parents’ equal protection challenge, noting both racial groups were still overrepresented compared to their share of the city’s school-aged population. The parents then asked the Supreme Court to take up their appeal.
“Should the Court turn away this case, it will only embolden government officials to continue targeting disfavored racial groups—particularly, Asian Americans,” they wrote in their petition. “The facts of this case make it especially troubling, and the Court’s refusal to intervene would send the signal that even overtly racist behavior will not stand in the way of racial balancing by proxy.”
Various libertarian and conservative interests filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the appeal.
It gave the justices another opportunity to weigh in on racially neutral admissions policies. They previously turned away a similar lawsuit against how students are now selected for Northern Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
Both cases latched onto the Supreme Court’s decision effectively striking down affirmative action at colleges.
Boston’s school board, known as the School Committee, urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the case because it was no longer a live controversy.
“The same students were eligible to apply again in 2022 under a new process that they do not challenge, and (if they applied) were either unsuccessful or already admitted,” the committee wrote in court filings.
The NAACP Boston Branch, which intervened in the case to defend the policy, similarly urged the justices to let the lower ruling stand.
“This is a uniquely fact-bound case about an expired policy and hobbled further by an utterly undeveloped record due to Petitioner’s strategic litigation choices,” it wrote.
